Minecraft

There is more to computer science than programming, I know. So just for fun, let’s see the ways game design meets ALL the CS strands as defined in the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) K-12 Computer Science Standards. Each time I see a standard being met, I’ll shout out in parenthesis one of the below strands. I’m using “QuickTextPaste” app to ctrl + alt + # to paste the pre-typed text of the standard. 1) Gamemaker Studio I use this most often. It starts students breaking larger problems down into digestible ones (4.2.1 Computational Thinking). The...

The TL:DR version to start programming with turtles as of October 2016. If you like visual steps, watch this video or this video. Buy/Download plain ol’ Minecraft on minecraft.net Download the free Computercraftedu.com mod (click “I’m a teacher”) Download Minecraft Forge 1.89 or higher (requires a Java runtime environment, which you may already have, but here’s the link if not.) Watch my turtle tutorial playlist My next goal is to get some Surfaces in the classroom so my high school students can visit the middle school to teach them programming in Minecraft....

“Learning to program is more fun when you can’t wait to see it run.” -Unintentional rhyme by student Using the free mod ComputerCraftEDU, my 6th grade students gave instructions to their “turtle”, asking it to build them a house. My gameplan: Minimum house dimensions of (in blocks) 5 wide X 5 deep X 5 high. students build a “blueprint” on graph paper of the house they’d like have their turtle build. Program turtle Create animated Gif of turtle building the house (turned in via Dropbox’s “request file” feature) Emphasize that I...